MILAN — The January 2022 murder of Euro performer Charlotte Angie is the subject of a new nonfiction book by an Italian journalist who was personally involved in the search and eventual capture of the confessed killer.
The new book, titled “Sulla Tua Pelle” (“On Your Skin”), was penned by Andrea Tortelli and was recently published by Giunti Editore.
Angie’s confessed murderer, David Fontana, was the performer’s neighbor in an apartment building in Rescaldina, near Milan. He had briefly been her romantic partner, and also collaborated with her on her self-shot adult content.
Fontana is still on trial in Italy and a psychiatric report hearing is scheduled for May 9.
A reviewer for Italy’s MOW magazine, which covers the local adult industry, wrote that with “Sulla Tua Pelle,” Tortelli's detailed journalistic investigation “has restored name, voice and dignity, not only to the victim of a brutal and horrible murder, but also to the young woman who was full of dreams and of hopes for her future.”
A Gruesome, Convoluted Saga
As XBIZ reported, Angie — whose legal name was Carol Maltesi — was a 26-year-old single mother and a salesperson at the Parfois boutique at the Malpensa airport, when she decided during the pandemic to become an adult performer.
“Charlotte Angie” emerged first on OnlyFans. To shoot her first scenes, Angie collaborated with her 43-year-old neighbor, Fontana, a bank employee and sometime food blogger. Angie would quickly be discovered as fresh, new talent and shoot for European studios.
Fontana had separated from his wife in March 2021, because of his relationship with Angie. However, that relationship allegedly did not last longer than a month, and Fontana described it as open.
During the summer of 2021, shortly after breaking off her romance with Fontana, Angie made the decision to devote all her energy to her adult career. She planned to move away from Rescaldina and commute between Verona, where her six-year-old son lived, and Prague, where she hoped to develop her incipient career as a performer in the European adult industry.
“I could not accept living without her,” Fontana told the authorities during his confession. “She was the one who was everything to me.”
According to Fontana, Angie had agreed to shoot a BDSM sex video sometime in January 2022 and they had agreed on the setup, including her being bound, her mouth being taped shut and her head covered with a hood, possibly a plastic bag.
Fontana told the authorities that after binding Angie, he took a hammer and started hitting her all over her body and on her covered head. He confessed that he then cut her throat with a kitchen knife “to avoid making her suffer.”
The next day Fontana took Angie’s car to a local store and bought a hatchet and a hacksaw. The following day, Fontana “returned to the victim's house, untied the body, freed it from the adhesive tape and began to tear it to pieces,” according to the Corriere Della Sera newspaper. As the days went by, Fontana bought a large freezer chest on Amazon to store the body parts and methodically cleaned the murder scene.
From January to March, Fontana used Angie’s phone to impersonate her on her social media accounts, and also paid her rent and bills. Through those months, Fontana traveled around the Northern Italian countryside looking for places to dispose of the body.
Authorities found the body parts, including some with distinctive tattoos, on March 20, 2022, apparently the same day Fontana finally disposed of them by throwing them down a cliff in Valcamonica.
Eight days later, Fontana went to the authorities to report Angie’s disappearance. He later said that he wanted the body parts to be identified, and that he had intended to return to his apartment and commit suicide.
“Instead he collapsed in the evening, under the weight of his contradictions,” the Corriere Della Sera reported.
Restoring Dignity to a Slain Sex Worker
Journalist Andrea Tortelli became part of the case around that time, when he engaged with the suspect via WhatsApp during the events leading up to Fontana’s arrest.
According to MOW’s Niccolò Fantini, who interviewed Tortelli, many of the mainstream Italian newspapers and TV channels that covered Angie’s murder acted scandalized once the victim had been described in headlines as a “hard actress.”
“In my opinion,” Tortelli said, “that denotes a male chauvinist or at least moralistic retrograde thought, as if there really was something socially disqualifying about the fact that a woman chose to do that kind of work. Or unspeakable.”
Editors of major outlets, Fantini notes, allowed their own prejudices to stifle the notion that Carol Maltesi was an independent woman who chose to follow the path she did.
In his book, Tortelli cites Angie’s own words when she complained about being stigmatized for her chosen career.
“What came to my mind is that above all there is a lack of respect among us women and this too is a form of psychological violence,” Angie wrote shortly before her death. “The other mothers, the other women, are always ready to judge you if you make decisions different from theirs. Personally, I have been told that I can’t do certain things as a woman, that I'm not a good mother because I like to travel — and I don't deny that I take certain trips without my son, or maybe because I take provocative photos. We are ready to judge others if they make unconventional choices, pointing the finger and making those women feel inadequate. I think that, in order to fight certain prejudices, we women should be the first to support ourselves.”
